Looking at aloneness

The speaker reflects on their experience of being alone and how it has changed them. They used to believe that being in a relationship or having a family was important, but ultimately realized they couldn't handle it. They have chosen to be alone and for the most part, it works better for them. They have some interactions with others, but it depends on how much they are needed. They miss the connection to some extent, but accept that they are meant to be alone. They find it hard to give and interact with people for long periods of time. They have realized that too much interaction interferes with their way of being. They have wanted others to join them on their journey, but it always ends with significant people leaving. They have become less emotional and find it difficult to desire or seek more interaction. They go with the flow and let others decide the level of interaction. They trust the process and when it's finished, they go back to their solitary space. They talk about how ever So, I am alone. I've been as alone as I'm able to be, not as alone as I could be, but as alone as I'm able to be for quite some time. And I've recognised that it has changed me. I always felt it was so important for me to be in a relationship, a family, I felt I benefited from it, or at least I recognised the benefit from it. But at some point it collapsed because ultimately I couldn't do it. So, I figured I have chosen to be alone and for the most part it works better. I get a bit of interaction now and again. Usually at the request of the other, the more I'm needed, the more interaction I have, the less I'm needed, the less interaction I have. I recognise that I miss it to some degree, but at the same time accept that I am meant to be alone, I am being alone, so alone I am. And I'm not exactly lonely because I'm not focusing on what I think is missing. I used to focus on it, it sent me on a long meandering journey of interactions with different people in different places, only to come back to the solitary state. No journey is ever wasted, but ultimately, in a sense, I didn't have to do it. I sort of had realised what I needed to realise, but kind of hadn't, so it had to really solidify through that next phase. But it has changed me. I'm less able to interact with people for long because I'm not real. I'm not emotional. I find it hard to give because in some ways too much is interfering with things. I just do me. And I'm not even sure what that means, but I'm best placed to do me. No one else can. I can't expect anyone to come along on the journey. I have wanted others to come along on the journey, only to realise quite quickly how much that interferes with me. Taking the journey, it's very strange that any or all significant people in my life eventually go, one way or another. It could be that as a protection mechanism, a defence mechanism from attachment, desire, hurt, suffering, I have become what I seem to feel gives me a way to just be on a day-to-day basis as best I can. It may be a terrible idea, or it may be the only solution. Yes, there are times when, of all the things I choose to do, I am fed up with it for a moment, that it would be nice to do something I don't normally do. With someone I'm not normally doing things with, I know if I was to spend too much time with someone I like being with and feel excitement, joy, have fun, it would be hard to return to a state where I don't. Often, after having interaction where I experience some of that, it takes me a few hours to sort of come back down to where I can just be and do what I do in this space in a simple, slower way. So, if I have too much of it, I want to continue doing it, and while that might seem great and feel great in the moment, the price for that is unsettled. I can't have it, I can't desire it, I can't seek more of it. All of those things lead to suffering. But if I avoid it altogether because I know that that causes me some issues, that in itself leads to suffering, because I'm desiring not to desire, I'm looking not to suffer, I can't do that. That's why I go with the flow, I allow that to take place, I allow the other to decide how much interaction I have. I trust the process, and when it's finished, I walk away, and I'm ready to go back into my solitary space that no one can really understand, and I don't really try to explain it, except perhaps in these moments and see what comes out when I do. I am doing time. I've talked about this. We're all doing time, we just don't notice it, because we're filling it with things that we want in there. We want to do things we love to do, especially if we have lots of things to do that we don't particularly like to do, lots of responsibilities, lots of work, lots of this, so that when there are moments when we can choose to do our own thing, we love it, because we don't get much of it. For me, I get that all the time. The vast majority of what I do is entirely my choice, so it isn't special, it's just what I do. Keep myself small, do my own thing, come and go as I please, but not really, no joy, no pleasure, no fun, not really, because that involves another. So it's almost like a paradox that I recognise that what's missing, if you'd like to call it that, is another, is other, but the other complicates things in such a way that it will eventually have to be missing, because that's the only thing where I can settle and find peace and be me. So how to reconcile that? Balance. When I come across, when I have interaction, it might be nice for a moment, but I don't pull at it, I don't attempt to hold it, make more of it, which of course would easily seem as if I'm not interested in doing that, and I get that. But that's not exactly true. I might very well be interested in any further interaction of someone new where I feel connected, but I can't want it. And if they want it, then it's not balanced as well, because I'll accept it if they offer it, but it's not balanced enough, they don't see, hmm, it's simply a reaction to being offered the possibility of something different. But actually the only thing that makes sense is everything being the same, nothing changing, even though everything does. And I recognise time actually passes really quickly. It does so with very little changing, day by day by day, for many, many days, for long periods of time, it is the same. And when something has to change, when there needs to be a shift, a moment of, it's quite unsettling, there's a temptation to avoid it if possible, and I avoid many things if I can. If I can't avoid it, because it's absolutely necessary, then I'll step up and deal with it until I can let go and go back to that feeling of things are the same. But sameness is monotonous. Sameness is stagnation. There's no growth without change. So again, another strange paradox that everything about life is about change, about growth, and yet even though I've experienced tremendous change and lots of growth, and I'm still here, so I'm not done, I do everything to keep things the same. Even having to replace a cable that has worn out is a bit of an issue, because for a moment how things have been can't continue to be. I have to adjust and adapt until I can replace it so that I can continue to be doing it the way I do it, and I just went through that recently. Only a few days it took to do this, but yet it interfered with the balance, it interfered with the sameness. It shouldn't be a problem, but the fact was that it messes with me. Anything that interferes with what I do, unless I choose it, messes with me for a while until I can accept it and adjust and adapt and come to recognise that it's okay. That I'll have learnt from it, I'll have changed something, I might have even recognised that it's of greater value that the shift, the change was needed to point me in a certain direction where an idea comes or a thing takes place, and I realise that actually this is better. And I wouldn't have got here had I simply allowed the thing to happen without resistance. In fact maybe I would have got here easier if I'd allowed it to happen without resistance. Even if it's not a physical resistance, there is a psychological one, which makes me wonder if I'm doing the right thing, if this is all really just some kind of elaborate escape from living a life, living life that just doesn't work for me. I mean, I can make it work on some level, this seems to be the best I can do to make it work. But it isn't really working, it's just the best I can do. And I am good at accepting things as they are so that at some point they just become normal. It's no longer a struggle, I'm no longer suffering, it's just how it is. But there is peace in it because I'm not constantly looking to make it different or better, to change it, what do I need, what should I get, what's missing, what should I find, where can I go, who can I see, I don't do that anymore. There needs to be a certain way that comes from certain ideas that come out of, that sometimes just spontaneously erupt, that when I put them into practice just makes it a bit easier for me, makes it feel righter, more efficient. That takes time, but as time has gone on, that's what's happened. If anything remains more complicated than it needs to be, at some point it seems that an idea pops up to help me understand how to simplify it. So at some point I am as simple as it needs to be, while it still has a certain complexity because I have to live. I'm living in a van, it requires me to be able to use power and to be able to cook sometimes, I've got to be able to do certain things and I have to have the means to be able to do that, I have to have the things that assist me with it, I've got to look after myself, keep my body clean and so on. All the things that we all do, I also do and that is part of life, I can't avoid it and I have tried. I felt that by having a relationship, by sharing it, certain things that the other would do I wouldn't have to do, which was true. I could then focus on, concentrate on the things I would prefer to do, which could make mine and our life better and for a while that's what happens. So I'm not saying that the idea of an other is completely out of the question, each time I've involved myself in a relationship there has been an element of difference because of the person being different, while there has been an element of sameness because I've brought the same me into it. I may always be that same me but I can't account for the unexpected newness of another, maybe unexpectedly something can happen, of course it can and maybe it will. But I tend to be avoiding and I'm wondering if it is because, I just don't want to go through that again, that somehow the joy and the fun and the pleasure and the connection isn't real. And eventually leads to suffering because that's what happens when things aren't real and yet I still feel tempted to repeat the same things maybe just because it makes a change and I haven't done it for a while. And that's what makes it seem fresh when it isn't, it just seems fresh. I mean we all need help, I have help in my aloneness but at the same time I still feel like I have to do everything myself. That it is best if I just rely on myself, I'm grateful and happy to receive kindness but don't have to, don't expect it, don't seek it and rely on myself. And yet relying on myself which perhaps is good, it's like it makes me self-sufficient, it makes me grow up that I'm not looking to my mother or looking to my partner or whatever to ease the burden, I just deal with it. But the price for that is anti-social, I feel less inclined to partake in social norms. I still do but I feel less inclined and not masking myself to be accepted because I recognise that even if I am it's not me who's being accepted and actually it's better not to be seen as somebody I'm not. I still can't help it sometimes and also pleasantries, they're part of kindness, it makes other people feel good and sometimes it makes me feel good, like I'm a part of the community. But I don't think I am really, it's just an illusion which is why I don't seek more of it, there are things that could be done, older people do to keep themselves busy, I could do some of those but I tend to just stay in the van. And when I'm in the library where I sit is usually alone, isolated, quiet and it suits me because of that reason, when it gets too busy which it does occasionally, when things change in a way that I feel aren't comfortable I leave and return to the van which for the most part gives me what I need. Yes, unexpectedly in the house garden nearby they could be doing work with power tools and noises, the dogs can be barking, it can be, there can be tests, I could because my home isn't fixed in one spot, go somewhere else. It is possible to find real silence in the area but I don't because that's also an escape, I used to do that in the first van and realised I had to come back quite quickly because I needed to be where I was. I still do but I'm just clearer on that now so I don't go anywhere, I have no need to actually go anywhere unless it's essential. So I don't know how this, I don't exactly know what I've said here, whether it's actually made any sense. I am alone, maybe I am also lonely but I remember being lonely before and that loneliness comes with a kind of sadness, feeling sorry for myself, maybe even a little depression. There is an element of openness for it to change, maybe wanting it to change so that the feeling of loneliness goes but I don't do that now, I don't feel like that now and yet I still have moments where suddenly I'm with another and I enjoy the experience of doing that and I feel completely different. Like I'm with my family, it's a spiritual family rather than really a physical one and I don't have to do and get involved with all the things that I would have to were they my actual physical family. But I still get rejuvenated, I still get energetic, I still get connected, I still feel joy, I still have fun, I still like it and it's like a gift, not a right. In a relationship that's been going for a while, if you take it for granted, you expect certain things, you get certain things, you do certain things, well when I experience my spiritual family I don't take it for granted so it affects me in a way that relationships never did or at least if they did, it disappeared real quick. Because of all the other stuff, the pressures, the weight, the heaviness, the issues that would rise up and interfere with being present, experiencing joy, having fun to the point where that's all that was there, problem, issue, suffering. I don't know if how I'm living is leading me to anything else. I have to be somewhere and while I am alive, day by day by day, I have to be comfortable, I have to be clean, I have to eat, I have to sleep, I have to fill my time with things that I find enjoyable. I don't know, I don't drink, I haven't taken drugs, I don't smoke, I don't take caffeine, nicotine, I'm not looking for chemical support. I could say that sometimes from a food perspective there is chemical support in the taste, in the pleasure, sugar being quite a tempting thing and I can go through phases where I feel myself pulled more towards it. I've just been through one and I'm out the other side now, recognizing and remembering, it's not good for me. So only things that are real are things that can stay, anything that's part of the illusion can't stay, it has to go, because otherwise it pulls me down and that's not the direction I want to go in. I don't see how I can go up metaphorically, I don't feel spiritual, I don't have beliefs or faith, I don't know anything, whatever I might have known, whatever I have experienced is gone. All that's left is what I actually experience, the reality of this moment in this moment, and this is all there is. I'm in my space, door closed, I'm talking on my voice recorder, having just recently finished watching a film, which is another kind of escape. At some point I'll probably pick up my phone and I'll play the one game that I have, which I play quite often, which fills up time, challenges me and I don't care what happens. And then at some point I'll make my bed up and I'll do my teeth and get my book and I'll read, and I might read for hours and hours or I'll fall asleep and then I'll read more later. And as soon as I finish one book I start another, and I've got 124 books waiting for me to read, and I keep adding to them all the time, electronically. And I love reading, I go through a couple of books a week, all different types, all different styles, recommended by others who have shared them. Genres that I wouldn't necessarily choose but yet having done so, find I've enjoyed. And then I do everything I do the following day, and adjust according to what time of day it is and what the weather's like, and I've got certain routines for this and that. I'm cutting back from receiving breakfasts and suppers and lunches from the charities, I'm no longer going for them. Keeping myself further away from contact unnecessarily. No ambition, no dream, just here and now. I have enough, I am abundant, I am able to do what I need to do, when I need to do it, that's my definition of abundance. And for the most part, I don't do many of the things that I could imagine doing, because I don't want to, they don't mean anything. And if I succumb, or I'm tempted and try and have another go, let me see, maybe I will like it, I quickly realise why I don't. I haven't got to the point where I am completely present and at peace. I may be more present, and there may be access to more peace in that presence, but I'm not there yet, I don't know where there is, I don't know if there is a there. That I am just as I am, and I experience what I experience, and I can't be looking for something I haven't got. Or thinking that there is more. It's just this. It's just this.